In the developing world of computer networks and data communication networks, and especially those involved with Enterpriser Server situations, many different types of problem situations are presented to a designer, proposal-maker, and configurator of Server Farm facilities having the purpose of the layout, design and configuration of computer server facilities for meeting the specialized requirements of a particular customer and doing so in an optimizing fashion.
Earlier attempts at configurating and optimizing Enterprise Server systems for different customers involved considerable guesswork and trial-by-error methods in trying to determine the best solution for their customer. Many times the customer is not exactly sure what his present and future requirements will be, and he must be led through a series of interviews and communication processes to establish parameters for his intended network operations.
With the accumulation of large amounts of data and information, then some orderly arrangement would be desirable in order to collect and manage this information in order to configure a particular Server Farm system, its memory capability and other requirements which will be useful to provide the optimum delivery of services to the customer, and yet with the minimum amount of cost, price and downtime which might occur.
Earlier methods involved the making of educated or approximate guesses in regard to subdividing large sites into reasonably-sized Server Farms. To overcome this uncertainty, it is now possible to have methods which will provide guidelines with a higher degree of certainty than previously known. As a result, there can be provided a method for calculating a primary-based solution, which indicates the appropriate number of servers, the amount of disk space requirements, and the volume of memory requirements. Earlier-used methods often relied on approximations, estimations, and trial-by-error configurations.
Another area which was often neglected in the prior art methods of estimation, involved the idea of “User weights” which were mostly ignored, but now can be further identified in terms of light, medium, heavy, and super heavy Users regarding the types of applications involved, the type of personnel using these applications and the computer facilities provided. As a result, a greater degree of specificity is now capable of being developed which can then foretell a solution with a greater degree of accuracy. These “weighting” parameters help to assess the amount of stress or processor use which are imposed by different User-types and different applications on a server.
Another area of specificity which had been unknown or ignored in past estimations, was that of determining the level of stress or usage involved in different User-types and different applications as they impact on the network operations. Thus, the idea of utilizing and giving a rating to different application attributes and putting them in defined categories, will now be found to aid in greater accuracy in developing a configuration sizing design. Thus, much of the guesswork of previous design estimates are eliminated in order to develop a more accurate configuration solution.
Another useful aspect is to further determine the amount of disk space capacity and also the volume of memory requirements that will be necessary for appropriate operation of the configuration designed for the particular requirements of a given customer or User.